“What are you doing here?”
Vlad edged his way through the girls and I held my breath, half-expecting a series of fainting spells as he made contact with the girls.
I bent my head when he approached me and pinched my lips together, trying to talk as discreetly as possible. “You better not be using a glamour.”
Vlad grinned at me. “That’s the funny thing. I’m not.”
I rolled my eyes and cocked out a hip. “What do you want?”
“Nothing, but Lorraine said I should give you this.”
He held out a royal-blue velvet shoulder bag. I wrinkled my nose. “I already have a purse.”
“It’s not the purse. She wanted you to have what’s inside.”
I frowned, then popped open the purse. I immediately snapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh my God, what is that?”
Vlad just shrugged and tossed some senior one of those “how you doin’?” head bobs.
The smell that was coming from the innocuous-looking bag was noxious to say the least. Kind of like a cross between Steve’s socks and flaming garbage.
“She said you need it for protection.”
“From what?” I pulled the bag shut. “From anyone with nostrils in a forty-five-mile radius? And why does she suddenly think I need protection?”
“I don’t know.” Another head nod as the girls went back to normal motion—although the majority of them seemed to find one reason or another to brush their breasts up against Vlad. “She said you put something on her desk and there was something dangerous in it or something.”
I gaped. “She said there was something dangerous in the photos or something? What was dangerous, Vlad?”
He shrugged. “I don’t remember. Something. What’d you put in the photos?”
“There was a picture of Battery Townsley, a picture taken here at the school, a receipt—”
“I definitely remember that she didn’t say anything about a receipt.”
I rolled my eyes. “Great.”
“And I’m doing you a favor bringing this here.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re doing me a favor?”
Vlad nodded.
“Out of the goodness of your black heart?”
Vlad’s eyes narrowed.
“And you got nothing out of it. Nothing except the satisfaction of knowing that I will now be safe against not-receipts.”
Vlad blinked. “I may have gotten something out of it, too.”
I waited and Vlad sighed.
“Fine,” he groaned. “Lorraine is going to talk to Kale. Maybe try to smooth things out so I could talk to her without her, you know, cutting off my head and spitting fire down my throat. Oh, and Lorraine said there’s something in there that you have to wear.” He took the bag from me, reached in, and yanked something that looked like a cat horked up, tied to a piece of twine. “This thing. You’re supposed to wear it all the time. Under stuff. It’s supposed to touch your skin.”
I took the charm from Vlad. As I brought it closer to my face, my mouth started to water with that familiar pre-vomit saliva. “I think I’m going to be sick.”
“Lorraine said you would get used to the smell.”
“Not likely.”
I held my breath and put the thing over my head anyway, immediately pushing the cat-hork end under my shirt, hoping that would stamp out the smell.
Vlad smiled. “Gotta go.”
He wound his way through the crowd and out the front doors. I briefly expected a rush of girls pressing their noses against the windows, pound-puppy style. Instead, I came eye to eye with Fallon.
“You know him?”
“Of course I do, Fallon. And you know what? I’m glad you’re here. I want to talk to you about something.”
Fallon looked over her shoulder and then back at me. She paused for a beat, then wrinkled her nose. “What smells?”
I took a deep breath and then instantly regretted it, visualizing my insides turning into withering blackness as the stench whipped through my lungs. “I don’t know. Come with me.”
I was surprised when Fallon did, falling into step with me. She pressed her palm against her nose. “It’s like the smell is getting worse.”
I pulled open the door to my old classroom and ushered Fallon in. She looked around as though she hadn’t been in that room every weekday of her junior year. “You’re not working here anymore. Are you allowed to pull students into an empty room like this?”
“Look, Fallon, I know what’s going on between you and Miranda.”
For the first time since I’d known the girl, Fallon’s eyes widened, her perfect fa?ade cracking just slightly. She recovered almost immediately.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
I put my hands on my hips and did my best to stare down and intimidate her. “The hall the other day? And then today? You said she wanted to ‘sit down for a spell.’ What did you mean by that?”
There was a miniscule twitch at the edges of Fallon’s mouth, the infinitesimal start of a smile. “She wanted to sit down.”
I inched closer. “You said, ‘for a spell.’”